John Classick is the author of a forthcoming memoir that traces an unlikely path from hardcore drug addiction and nine years in prison to a life rebuilt through literature, discipline, and mentorship. Once written off by nearly everyone—including himself—John’s turning point came through an unexpected relationship with a high-school teacher who challenged him to read, wrestle with, and live out the ideas found in the Great Books of the Western World.

Through years of incarceration, John immersed himself in the works of history’s greatest thinkers, discovering that the same ideas that shaped civilizations could also reshape a single, broken life. His story is not one of quick fixes or inspirational clichés, but of slow transformation—earned through study, suffering, and personal responsibility.

On podcasts, John speaks candidly about addiction, prison culture, redemption, and the power of serious reading in an age of distraction. His work explores a provocative question: What happens when a man with nothing left is given the best ideas humanity has ever produced—and takes them seriously?

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